Oh, Great: We Have Stress At Work And At Home, Too

Stressed out at work? You’ll probably feel worse when you get home. | Source: ShutterStock

In case you were hoping to escape the stress of work by going home, tough luck: A new study suggests we’re more stressed at home than we are in the office.

A Penn State study (via NBC News) of an admittedly small sample size–only 122 participants–showed higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol at home than at work. However, the participants often reported their stress levels differently than what their stress hormone levels demonstrated.

Authors of the study think that the implications aren’t that you should necessarily work more, nor that the participants had unhappy home lives. Instead, the conclusion was that everyone just has so much to do in both arenas that the stress of balancing work and home responsibilities is what triggered stress levels to increase once the participants clocked out and went home for the night.

The study results were pretty consistent between men and women, as well as between parents and non-parents, but there was one exception: Higher wage workers were about equally stressed at home as they are at work. Study authors say that this indicates that higher wage workers often have more on-the-job stress, as opposed to them having less stress at home.

One bit of good news? The study shows that work is actually good for you. Remember that next Monday when you’d rather watch your own snuff film than hear your alarm go off.